Published 9:49 am, Wednesday, October 14, 2015

HARTFORD >> Connecticut’s Supreme Court is being asked to decide whether there are legal limits to the confidentiality of a conversation between a married couple.

The court is set to hear arguments Wednesday in the appeal of Sheila Davalloo, who was convicted of murdering a rival for the affections of another man.

Anna-Lisa Raymundo, 32, was found beaten and stabbed nearly 20 times in her Stamford condominium in November 2002.

Prosecutors said Davalloo killed Raymundo because she also had been in a sexual relationship with Raymundo’s boyfriend, Nelson Sessler. The three worked together at Stamford-based pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma.

Davalloo’s laywers argue the trial court should not have allowed her husband to testify about incriminating statements she made to him.

Davalloo was identified as a suspect in Raymundo’s murder after being arrested for stabbing her husband, Paul Christos, four months later.

The state Appellate Court found that the spousal privilege did not apply in this case because Davalloo’s conversations with her husband were not “induced by affection, as required by the law.”

Instead, the court ruled, they were made to deceive him, further her obsessive relationship with Sessler, and induce her husband “to assist in his own demise”

Christos was stabbed with a paring knife while handcuffed and blindfolded. Police said Davalloo had convinced him to play a game in which he was supposed to guess what she was touching him with.

Christos testified during his wife’s murder trial that she had frequently told him stories about a friend, “Melissa,” and of the intimate details of Melissa’s workplace love triangle with “Jack” and “Anna Lisa.”

He also told authorities that he lent his wife night-vision binoculars and an eavesdropping device so she could help “Melissa” spy on “Jack.” He also testified that she had a lock-picking kit and had practiced picking locks at home.

Davalloo’s lawyers sought to bar that evidence, arguing that the marital privilege applies even when a marriage is “bad.”

Davalloo is expected to begin serving her 50-year Connecticut sentence after she has finished serving a 25-year sentence in New York for the attempted murder of her husband.